A Random Caller: Cancer Poetry

Cancer is a disease with a persona of mystery, often referred to through the use of negative metaphors such as alien, evil, and foreign, while its medical treatment and recovery phases are described with warfare metaphors, and sadly when death is the end result, one is said to have lost their battle with cancer. However, Cameron in this debut collection, draws the reader into the expansive territory of cancer poetry, where attempts are made to construct meaning far beyond the battlefield. The emotional roller coaster of cancer, the messy, at times humorous, at times ugly, aspects of cancer, its treatment, and its people are explored in this wide-ranging collection of poems that weave connections between nature and humanity into the clinical settings and finds quiet hope amidst the fear and suffering. Cameron speaks from her experience as cancer patient, but also from decades working as a health professional. She writes with a profound insight into the complexities of living and dying with serious illness, and of the grieving for those who are left behind.

'Heather Cameron's striking poems are alive to the true mess and unruliness of "the uncontrollable world". In this very assured debut collection there are reckonings and there are epiphanies but there remains an appealing openness to the unresolved, to ambivalence and an acknowledgment of ever-present dereliction. It is in no way easy to write about cancer with such a uniformly unsentimental and clear-eyed vision as this poet achieves here.' - Lucy Dougan